Tuesday 17th - Busy inside and out

Just a small group of the regular Tuesday attendees in today, but boosted by three members of the Dirty Gang in relation to the external activities.

Beginning today with Keith undercoating the new cupboard for our Mansafe wire harnesses. The cupboard will reside in the Paintshop and will be a better place to store the harnesses that simply hung on a hook in our changing room.

Some good progress with BSK 34929 today. Maurice worked on the Malvern side north end door, initially completing any outstanding sanding.

With that completed, he taped up the edges of the wood back sections for protection.

The demarcation tape on the coach corner was then put on, allowing Maurice to begin the undercoating in Madder. The completed job saw the corner, door, and right hand capping strip undercoated and a lovely sight after being in grey for a long time.

On the Cotswold side Richard was doing the same job on the double doors. By the end of the day, all the grey here had also been covered with Madder undercoat.

The recent bit of welding done at the base of the north end corridor connection was attended to by Keith. Initially some paint repairs to the wooden frame on the right hand side were dealt with, and then the new metal at the base of the two crash pillars was coated in red oxide. This will be black glossed on Thursday. 

While the shunting was going on outside, John took the opportunity to work on the newly refurbished DA valve under the Cotswold side of the coach, tightening up the nuts and bolts, some of which are difficult to get at. Referring back to last Saturday's posting, the vacuum cylinder receiving the new gator was the serviced one reinstated here - the new green gator is very obvious.

Towards the end of the day, with all the shunting over, John, Ian and Tony retested the brake system with the vacuum pump. 

The shunting went on for a lot of the day and was done to cater for several aspects. As well as rearranging the location of various vehicles, some of these were brought into the Barn so as to enable the swapping of the bogies. Two of the coaches that have been sold will be static in their new homes and thus can have bogies that would not be suitable for running.

The first of the two bogies from under the BG are wheeled out by Ian and John.

More rearranging with BG 81039 and TSO 5042 now the right side of the Irish boiler coach, which has also been sold. Tony was shunter for the day with Neil, our Operations manager, driving the 03.

 The bogies on the Works through road are now pulled away by the 03.

The latter stages of the day's activities with the rebuilding of the PWay train. Initially the warflat wagon and two of the PWay gang's vans were pulled out of the relevant siding. It was rather nice to see a mini-goods train on the move again.
 

The vehicles were then propelled into the outer siding to collect the PWay mess coach, looking very nice in its new livery. The whole group was then pushed back into the siding used for their train. The warflat wagon was then returned to its original siding. 

RMB 1808, which for quite some time has obscured the view of the PWay mess coach (BG 81049) when we looked across the main line to that side of the yard, has now ended up on the Cotswold side of the yard at the bottom end. The sounds of shunting went on for much of the day, so the above group of photos cover just a part of what was done.

Back to the Works and into Upholstery to find Dave battling with the old scrap moquette on this seat cushion from TSO 5042. The pliers used as such make a good job of moquette removal, leaving just the old staples sticking upright and thus very easy to pull out afterwards.

Retuirning later, Dave is now in the process of trimming and securing new canvas over the cushion.

Back in the Paintshop Alan is giving the latest batch of beading from TK 24006 a final sanding to clean off any remaining marks as much as possible. He then went on to give the whole lot an initial coat of varnish.

Going over to TK 24006, Dave was in the process of adding red oxide to the metal seat rests.

Dave, the joint-owner of 24006, obtained a sample of the original moquette that was possibly used in the coach when it was built in 1951.  The moquette, known as Boomerang (look closely at the shapes in the pattern), was exhibited in a mock-up compartment at the Festival of Britain. It proved to be very popular with the public. The mock-ups which have survived have been subsequently displayed at the NRM.      

The above photograph was taken at the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway who have a coach with this moquette and very nice it looks too.